So Many Things to Buy
And Sell, and So Many
Lessons to Be Learned

By

John Lilly

Updated Aug. 14, 2001 12:01 a.m. ET

They called him "Silent Cal" and, as politicians go, he was. But a better adjective might have been "laconic." Calvin Coolidge avoided the sonorous blather so characteristic of his profession, but he was something of an aphorist. "In public life it is sometimes necessary to appear really natural to be actually artificial," he wrote. And: "Goods not worth advertising are not worth selling." And of course: "The business of America is business."